Previewing —
Tonight·—
The moon takes a little under a month to go from dark to full and back, and the exact length changes month to month because its orbit is an ellipse, not a circle. Here is the whole cycle, with tonight marked.
Worked out from the phase alone, and rules of thumb rather than an almanac. The moon is above the horizon for roughly twelve hours at a stretch, which is why moonset lands about twelve hours after moonrise. Your latitude and the moon’s tilted orbit can shift both by an hour or more.
Everything in this section is recorded tradition, folklore and custom. It is set down here because it is genuinely old and genuinely interesting, not because it is claimed to be true — the section above it is the part that is measured.
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